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Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

nytimes.com

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Re: Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

#291

Post by logicchains »

0xcafefood wrote: post #275
kittikitti wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article is ragebaiting people and it's an embarrassing piece from the NYT.

NYT has it out for digital advertisers, who directly compete with them. I do sense some schadenfreude here that the tech nerds who work at these places might be in trouble. "Silicon Valley panjandrums spent the 2010s lecturing American workers in dying industries that they needed to “learn to code." To copywriters at the NYT, LLMs are far better at stringing together natural language prose than large amounts of valid…

LLMs are much better at coding now than at writing prose that doesn't sound like slop.

Re: Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

#292

Post by notpachet »

GorbachevyChase wrote: post #268
dsQTbR7Y5mRHnZv wrote: post #96

> in coding, L.L.M.s take away the drudgery and leave the human, soulful parts to you. I've always hated solving puzzles with my deterministic toolbox, learning along the way and producing something of value at the end. Glad that's finally over so I can focus on the soulful art of micromanaging chatbots with markdown instead.

You can always code by hand as a hobby. If someone is paying you for your work results, that you find it interesting or fun is orthogonal. I get the sense from the commentary section here that there’s a perception that writing programs is an exceptional profession where developer happiness is an end unto itself, and everyone doing it deserves to be a millionaire in the process. It just comes across as child-like thin…

> at least as well as the bottom 10% of programmers

I don't think this is the flex you think it is... in my experience, the bottom 10% of programmers are actively harmful and should never be allowed near your codebase.

Re: Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

#293

Post by bluefirebrand »

DennisP wrote: post #286
bluefirebrand wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a fools errand We are paid to do the tedious stuff because it is tedious. If we actually ever succeed in automating away the tedious stuff, we're out of work

There definitely is economic value in solving the more challenging problems. Junior devs who can only do the tedious parts have lower salaries.

There are way fewer challenging problems that people are willing to pay me to solve.

Sure I would love to be working on some cutting edge challenging stuff, but the reality is it has been much more realistic to do the tedious stuff for pay instead

Re: Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

#294

Post by notpachet »

stavros wrote: post #232
GoblinSlayer wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you address user requests? Tailor-make a custom app for every user?

Cars are here and you're wondering how someone could possibly make a faster horse. You wouldn't address user requests. You aren't a business. The users all make their own apps for themselves.

Cars are here and we're all choking on our own atmospheric excrement, so...

Re: Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

#295

Post by [deleted] »

GorbachevyChase wrote: post #289
flux3125 wrote: post #277

> You can’t just tell an agent, Build me the code for a successful start-up. The agents work best when they’re being asked to perform one step at a time That's also true for humans. If you sit down with an LLM and take the time to understand the problem you're trying to solve, it can perfectly guide you through it step by step. Even a non-technical person could build surprisingly solid software if, instead of immedia…

I appreciate this sober take. If you hired a remote developer and the only thing you said to that person was “build a program that does this. Make no mistakes” would you expect that to be successful? Are you certain you would get what you wanted?

[deleted]

Re: Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

#296

Post by glaslong »

dorfsmay wrote: post #260

For me, the biggest shift is people who don't care about local AI. The idea that you can no longer code without paying a tax to one of the billion $ backed company isn't sitting well.

The marginal differences in quality seem pretty meaningful right now, enough to make Claude wildly dominant, but some of the locally runnable models like Qwen feel only a few months behind the leaders.

I'm betting the generational gains level off and smaller local models close the gap somewhat. Then harnesses will generally be more important than model, and proprietary harnesses will not offer much more than optimization for specific models. All while SaaS prices ratchet up, pushing folks toward local and OSS. Or at least local vs a plethora of hosted competition, same as cloud vs on prem.

Re: Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

#297

Post by anonzzzies »

I dunno; I finally can focus on writing the logic I wanted to write all along and finally my upbringing in formal verification makes sense as I can spend my time on it instead of figuring what garbage (I cannot use it in my work but sbcl is one of the things that does not grow tumors in software) updates I will never ever need my friends added to the framework or language or ide I happen to use.

Re: Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

#298

Post by AstroBen »

GorbachevyChase wrote: post #289
flux3125 wrote: post #277

> You can’t just tell an agent, Build me the code for a successful start-up. The agents work best when they’re being asked to perform one step at a time That's also true for humans. If you sit down with an LLM and take the time to understand the problem you're trying to solve, it can perfectly guide you through it step by step. Even a non-technical person could build surprisingly solid software if, instead of immedia…

I appreciate this sober take. If you hired a remote developer and the only thing you said to that person was “build a program that does this. Make no mistakes” would you expect that to be successful? Are you certain you would get what you wanted?

Any competent developer there is going to push back and get the needed information out of you.

LLMs don't know when you're under-specifying the problem.

Re: Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

#299

Post by kjkjadksj »

DennisP wrote: post #286
bluefirebrand wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a fools errand We are paid to do the tedious stuff because it is tedious. If we actually ever succeed in automating away the tedious stuff, we're out of work

There definitely is economic value in solving the more challenging problems. Junior devs who can only do the tedious parts have lower salaries.

You think people are still getting senior level comp when the job is prompting llm? Ha!

Re: Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

#300

Post by delecti »

deadbabe wrote: post #248
zazibar wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think though that the day is coming where I can trust the code it produces and at that point I'll just by writing specs. It's not there yet though. Must be nice to still have that choice. At the company I work for they've just announced they're cancelling all subscriptions to JetBrains, Visual Studio, Windsurf, etc. and forcing every engineer to use Claude Code as a cost-saving measure. We've been told we should b…

I hope they are prepared to pay the $500/month per head when subsidies expire.

Realistically that's an increase of maybe a couple percent of cost per employee. If it truly does end up being a force multiplier, 2-5% more per dev is a bargain. I think it's exceedingly unlikely that LLMs will replace devs for most companies, but it probably will speed up dev work enough to justify at least a single-digit percent increase in per-dev cost.
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